


death, becomes ye

by saintsurvivor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Depression, Hallucinations, Hurt Sam Winchester, Please Help Sam Winchester, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Sam Winchester-centric, Season/Series 05, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 21:59:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18352529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsurvivor/pseuds/saintsurvivor
Summary: Four ways Sam resists Lucifer's claims of resurrections. One way Dean finds out about it.





	death, becomes ye

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note #1** : Please, **please** heed the warning on this particular fic. It's not nice, it's not pleasant.  
>  **Author's Note #2** : You can find me on tumblr at [svstiels](http://svstiels.tumblr.com)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He shudders back to life twenty minutes later, sunrise falling across his face. There are no new missed calls. ___

 

_Experience is a brutal teacher /  but you learn fast._

_—_ **William Nicholson** , published in, “S _hadowlands”_

 

**[one]**

It’s a dare wrapped up as a challenge, wrapped up as promise, wrapped up as a truth.

 _And I’ll just bring you back_ , Lucifer says, mild, unassuming. Sam chokes on his disgust. His father always called him competitive, maybe this isn’t what he meant. But Sam can feel tundra-that-isn’t grace wrapping around his bones, seeping into his flesh.

So Sam sits on the edge of that Oklahoma motel bed, ducks away from the tweaked open blinds, the weak moonlight filtering across the carpet.

Swallowing six dozen pills isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Sam swallows them down anyway, chokes on them even as he shovels more and more in. Something burns in his gut; disgust, loathing. Maybe it’s just the two dozen choked back, thrown up pills he’s already let settle into his empty belly.

Lucifer watches, a silent shadow with a mocking grin just in the of the room. Watches at how Sam force feeds himself those whiskey-drenched pills, shaking hands and tear-wet cheeks. Goads him, almost.

 _It won’t last, Sam_ , the devil whispers. Sam blinks, and suddenly Lucifer, in his rotten sinew glory, is at his side. Bends down so his mouth is at Sam’s ear, tundra-that-isn’t grace and blood stale breath. _You’re mine, Sam, for eternity/_

Sam chokes back those pills, threatening to make an appearance. Disregards the tears on his cheeks, the way his hands shake, sending pills everywhere. He’s raided the first aid box, boxes of tylenol, sleeping aids, unnamed pills all washed back in rotgut whiskey. He is a desperate, desperate man.

He coughs, throws up ten pills. His shoulders curl up to his ears, feels his knees hit the carpeting besides the puddle. His mouth tastes of bile and distant failure. He gags, deep and desperate, back arching, ribs cracking, jaw breaking.

His eyes clench shut, hands tightening into fists. He is being torn apart piece by piece, pill by pill, heave by desperate, sickening heave. He dies, seconds to minutes to hours, one step at a time. This is all that is left of a once proud man.

 _That won’t do_. Lucifer says, and he is a cold presence stretched out against Sam’s heaving side, unneeded, unwanted. But still he remains, evidence of failure, of indignation, of manipulation.

Sam heaves, sobs between the breath he can catch, doesn’t know if it’s from the loathing in his belly or the pills choking him. Turns his face away from the devil.

 _This is where you belong_ , satan croons. Leans forward, curls his fingers around Sam’s shuddering chin. _Supplicant, before me_.

( _If I cannot have you as an equal,then I will conquer._ )

He digs his nails into the underside of Sam’s chin, and Sam shudders apart, a ghost given corporeal form. His mouth lolls open, eyes half mast. Pills drop out, smeared across his chin, his bile slick neck.

He doesn’t stand a chance, makes only a whimpering sound in the back of his throat as Lucifer grips his throat, tender, _loving,_  in the worst possible way. Heaves him up, and somehow, _somehow_ , his feet leave the floor, and Sam is suspended in the air, gasping and breathless and this fearful breaking thing he only ever seems to be with Dean and Lucifer.

 _You are mine, Sam_ , Lucifer croons, flicks his forked tongue into the air, across his vessel’s lips. Sam wheezes, chokes on air and pills and biles. He’s hanging there, lifeless, unhelpful. Dying.

“Ple-,” He tries to gasp, can’t get a word around his own sickness, the hand around his throat. Lucifer raises an eyebrow, unbearably human for only a second.

Lucifer lies him down on the double bed, gentle, fond and perhaps the way Lucifer is so unbearably soft is what breaks something deep inside of Sam. Lucifer has been the only one to be so tender with him for so long, perhaps he’s only made for violence. What’s worse is the sneaking suspicion is that violence is the only thing Sam Winchester is made for.

He turns his head away from Lucifer, clenches his eyes against the tears even as he fights for breath. He never wanted this, he thinks, desperate, praying.

 _I’m going to let you die, Sammy_ , the devil murmurs, sits on that bed besides Sam’s supine body, strokes a hand over Sam’s cheek, wraps gently around his convulsing throat. A heavy five-fingered burning anchor. _I’m going to let you die, just to see that broken look in your eyes when you come straight back into my arms_.

Sam tries to turn his head. Shudders apart beneath Lucifer’s loving hands. Lucifer watches him, greedy.

Sam dies, breathless, at ten past three of a morning, in that Oklahoma motel, the devil his only companion, with no missed calls nor text messages.  

He shudders back to life twenty minutes later, sunrise falling across his face. There are no new missed calls.

 _You’re a monster, Sam,_ the devil murmurs, presses his mouth to Sam’s ear. Snake-tongue, liesmith. Truthteller. Licks the tears from Sam’s temple. _He’s done trying to save you_.

 

**[two]**

Three hundred and sixty five miles and a week away from that Oklahoma motel room, Sam fills a large bathtub with almost fifty bottles of blessed holy water.

He is alone, cooped up in a rundown hunting cabin in the very depths of Colorado woods. He does not strip naked, stands there for only a moment, indecisive.

He steps into that holy water bath, bare foot, feels the way the cold water sloshes around his calves, his thighs, plaid heavy and denim even heavier. He stretches out in that bath. Unbidden, his mind recalls _picking hemispheres_ , and thinks perhaps this isn’t what Dean had in mind when _picking hemispheres._

He treads water for only a few minutes. There is something calm about him, resigned. Sam doesn’t quite know why. Maybe it’s the lack of the devil, lingering, looming above his shoulders. But Sam feels Lucifer everywhere now, that tundra-that-isn’t grace and blood stale breath.

He inhales, feels his fingers skimming the very surface of holy water. He can feel his hair, wet and floating in the water, brushing against his cheek. He doesn’t close his eyes, stares at the wooden ceiling, gouging the traces of wear and tear.

He sinks deep beneath the water, exhales, holy water vessel of Lucifer’s, eyes open, baptised. He drowns three times, hands holding him down, he doesnt know whose.

Just like he doesn’t know if the water on his face is holy water or from tears.

Perhaps they’re both holy.

 

**[three]**

Sam tried to hang himself at Stanford, just the once.

Part of depression and stress and anxiety, it had culminated in Sam standing on a little rickety chair, a nylon rope draped around his neck. He’d exhaled, had been about to step off of that little stool, had felt the nylon tighten around his throat, when his mobile had blared, bright and cheery, vibrating across his table with caller ID blaring out that it was _DEAN W._ attempting to contact him.

He still hasn’t told Dean of that night. Their first contact in just over a year and a half, somehow when Sam just needed it the most.

The conversation had been stilted, awkward in a way it never had been before with Dean. Sam had spoke happily about classes with a nylon rope around his neck, sat on that rickety little stool.

He’d kept the nylon rope, had left it in his dufflebag, even when he’d moved in with Jess, had hidden it from her.

It had burnt up, just like Jess.

It feels the same, he thinks vaguely.

Sturdy rope draped around his throat, pulse hammering away. The feel of unsteady wood beneath his feet, three days after drowning, baptised in holy water and tears and fear. Stricken, fearful, _breaking_. Still not on solid ground, slip sliding, a rockfall with no cause nor destination.

Sam has always been pragmatic.

 _Do it, Sam_ , the devil whispers. From behind, wraps a hand around Sam’s throat, pushes his head up and back, adam's apple bobbing desperately. _Let me hear the sound of that neck breaking, go on, Sam._

 _Dance for me, Sam_ , the devil breathes.

Sam steps forward, unhindered, calm rising in his belly. His eyes fall close, inhale, exhales. The devil laughs, pressed intimately against Sam’s back, nose tucked behind Sam’s ear.

 _You are so fearful,_ the devil murmurs, grips Sam’s hips in bruising grips. _But beneath that_ -

Sam steps from that rickety chair, hands automatically grabbing at the rope that tightens. He struggles, little gasps of air, legs kicking. He looks Lucifer dead in the eyes. It takes three minutes for him to die, shaking.

Lucifer laughs, long and loud. Snaps his fingers, doesn’t put Sam back on that little rickety stool just to watch how Sam’s face goes purple and blue.

He does it again, just for kicks, puts Sam back on that rickety stool. Sam inhales, exhales.

 _Your purity is distracting_ , the devil murmurs, tender, intimate, possessive.

He doesn’t heal the rope burns.

The devil pushes him, and that makes it thrice.

 

**[four]**

The forests of Grand Junction, Colorado are thick, scented like pine.

Dean is at his side, a shadow of distrust and anger. He wields a shotgun and a flare gun, and sometimes Sam wants to swallow that flare gun down just to see if that would do the trick.

After all, it alights a Wendigo’s insides aflame; what is Sam now but a Wendigo of his own making, a numbing hunger scraping at the inside of his belly, throat aching for more.

He does it after, Dean looking the other way, unknowing, perhaps accepting, Wendigo put down like a dog. Sits next to the smouldering corpse creature, shoves that flare gun down his throat, gags on it.

Inhale. Exhale. Swallows, tongue pressed against the underside, fearful.

Pulls the trigger, flarelight explosion.

It tastes a lot like demon blood going down, human bile and ash when it’s coming back up.

_I have already died all the deaths there are._

— **Hermann Hesse** , tr. by Paul Weinfield, from “ _All Deaths,_ ”


End file.
